Thursday, November 29, 2012

Semester 2 may have finished, but JCU Libraries will still be open over the summer period. Take advantage of your Library if you need to complete any study or research over the summer period. You can check the Cairns and Townsville Library opening hours web pages to help organise your time.

Don't forget that the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library has a 24/7 Information Commons computer lab which is available for you to utilise even when the Library building is closed. This ground floor computer lab is accessible after-hours via your JCU student card.

How do you react when those whoop whoop cyclone warnings hit the airwaves? Have you ever thought what it must have been like in the days when there was little or no warning?

Cyclone Leonta, which struck Townsville on 9th March 1903, was considered the worst the city had seen. With a central pressure of approximately 965 millibars, today it would be classed as Category 3, with winds between 170-225 kph or greater.

Both cathedrals were unroofed, the School of Arts was destroyed and eight people died as the hospital disintegrated. Townsville Grammar School’s impressive two storey brick building, which had withstood Cyclone Sigma seven years earlier, was completely destroyed. By mid-morning the roof had already been ripped off the upper storey but it was not until “the first gong had sounded for dinner” that catastrophe struck and the solid brick walls collapsed.

A terrifying scramble followed as teachers struggled to find safe-haven for the 60-odd students. When the headmaster’s house seemed in peril, the girls who were sheltering there joined the boys in a flight across Queen’s Park towards the nearby orphanage. But as roofing iron and other debris hurtled towards them across the open ground, they took refuge in a water-filled gully, from where they witnessed the complete destruction of the orphanage, their intended sanctuary.

Incredibly, injuries were minor but the school itself suffered severely. Although students were soon back at work in alternative premises, the financial burden was massive. Appeals were ignored by Government and locals, many of whom considered the school elitist and who were struggling with their own losses. Within 2 years the headmaster, F.T Miller, and existing staff had left and it was fifty years before the school recovered financially.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

A/Prof. Paul PaglianoThe multisensory handbook: A guide for children and adults with sensory learning disabilities

Do you support a child or adult with sensory perceptual issues or cognitive impairment? For people with challenging sensory and cognitive conditions, everyday life can become so unpredictable and chaotic that over time, lack of engagement can often lead to a state of learned helplessness. In this insightful text, Paul Pagliano shows how ‘learned helplessness’ can be transformed into learned optimism through multisensory stimulation, and explains how a programme of support can be designed and modulated to match the person’s needs, interests and abilities.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

In December 1996 James Cook University awarded one of its very first honorary doctorates to 81-year-old Kathleen McArthur, wildflower artist, environmental educator and activist. After receiving her degree of Doctor of Educational Studies she was invited to present the occasional address. A reproduction of one of her paintings illustrated the programme.

Kathleen’s love of Australian flora, her artistic gifts and forthright nature had for decades made her a significant figure in environmental education and advocacy. At home on the Sunshine Coast the sale of her paintings, and of home-grown native plants, brought funds for her conservation campaigns, and raised awareness of the beauty and fragility of our wildflowers. Despite being a sometimes controversial figure locally, in 2002 the Sunshine Coast named her their “Citizen of the Century”.
In 1962 Kathleen became one of the founders of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland and increased her activism. She had an advanced ecological understanding and a particular love for the flower-rich wallum country of the south-east. The beautiful Cooloola National Park owes its existence to her efforts.

Kathleen regarded her book Queensland Wildflowers: a selection (1960) as the first popular book on the subject, hoping it would “bridge the gap between scientist and public” and generate the love and recognition that would prompt a more widespread desire to protect. She widened her scope with Looking at Australian Wildflowers (1986) which beautifully displays the delicacy of her art and the liveliness of her writing. In the Foreword her friend, Judith Wright, speaks of the “delighted immediacy of Kathleen’s response to and interaction with the flowers she loves”. Both books are held in the Shaw Collection and the School of Education holds a selection of her prints.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Author of the most influential long poem of its era (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) and the funniest long poem in European literature (Don Juan), Lord Byron was also the literary superstar of Romanticism, whose effect on nineteenth-century writers, artists, musicians and politicians – but also everyday readers – was second to none. His poems seduced and scandalized readers, and his life and legend were correspondingly magnetic, given added force by his early death in the Greek War of Independence. This introduction compresses his extraordinary life to manageable proportions and gives readers a firm set of contexts in the politics, warfare, and Romantic ideology of Byron's era. It offers a guide to the main themes in his wide-ranging oeuvre, from the early poems that made him famous (and infamous) overnight, to his narrative tales, dramas and the comic epic left incomplete at his death.

Summer is here, the sun is fierce, and the Cancer Council Australia is asking everyone to watch their backs - literally. Two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they are 70. The good news is that skin cancer, including melanoma, is largely preventable and the earlier it’s caught the better the chance of survival.
“Look for new moles or any change in shape, colour or size of a mole or spot. Visit your doctor if you notice any change.”

JCU Library has some interesting resources on the identification, treatment and prevention of skin cancers:

Monday, November 19, 2012

Chrystopher J. Spicer (Faculty of Arts, Education and Social Sciences)Great Australian world firsts: The things we made, the things we did

Australians are among the most outstanding innovators on the planet, leading the world in achievements across many fields such as sport, the arts, medicine, transport and exploration. From Sir Jack Brabham (first to win a Grand Prix in a car of his own design) to Tom Angove (inventor of the wine cask), from Bruce Thompson (introduced the first dual flush toilets) to Mary Fortune (the first female author of detective fiction) - here are the world's great ideas, inventions, feats and follies - as done first, by Australians.

Anime's media mix: Franchising toys and characters in Japan. Untangles the web of commodity, capitalism, and art that is anime. In this book
Marc Steinberg convincingly shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Engaging with film, animation, and media studies, as well as analyses of consumer culture and theories of capitalism, Steinberg offers the first sustained study of the Japanese mode of convergence that informs global media practices to this day.

LEGO: A love story. An adult LEGO fan's dual quest: to build with bricks and build a family. There are 62 LEGO bricks for every person in the world, and at age 30, Jonathan Bender realized that he didn't have a single one of them. While reconsidering his childhood dream of becoming a master model builder for The LEGO Group, he discovers the men and women who are skewing the averages with collections of hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks. What is it about the ubiquitous, brightly colored toys that makes them so hard for everyone to put down?

Toy monster: The big, bad world of Mattel. An eye-popping, unauthorized exposé of the House of Barbie from Boise to Beijing, Mattel's toys dominate the universe. Its no-fun-and-games marketing muscle reaches some 140 countries, and its iconic products have been a part of our culture for generations. Now, in this intriguing and entertaining exposé, New York Times bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer places the world's largest toy company under a journalistic microscope, uncovering the dark side of toy land, and exploring Mattel's oddball corporate culture and eccentric, often bizarre, cast of characters.

Understanding children as consumers. What drives children as consumers? How do advertising campaigns and branding effect children and young people? How do children themselves understand and evaluate these influences? Whether fashion, toys, food, branding, money - from TV adverts and the supermarket aisle, to the Internet and peer trends, there is a growing presence of marketing forces directed at and influencing children and young people. How should these forces be understood, and what means of research or dialogue is required to assess them? With critical insight, the contributors to this collection, take up the evaluation of the child as an active consumer, and offer a valuable rethinking of the discussions and literature on the subject.

Monday, November 12, 2012

We all know and understand the need to be green, and National Recycling Week 2012 is the perfect time to celebrate the recycling we do well, and to think about what we can do better. During National Recycling Week Planet Ark aims to increase the environmental benefits (including greater tonnage and less contamination) of kerbside, industrial and community recycling programs. Keep your eyes open for paper and mixed recycling bins promoted by TropEco in JCU Library branches. Recycle, and help Planet Ark reach their goal.

When you put materials into your recycling bin, don't ever put them in a plastic bag.

Don't put oven-proof glass, drinking glasses or ceramic mugs in your bin. Just 25g of oven-proof glass can contaminate one tonne of normal glass, making it useless for recycling.

Keep recycling those newspapers and magazines! Last year, we recycled the equivalent of 1 billion newspapers into newsprint and other paper materials. When it comes to newspapers and magazines, we are arguably the best recyclers in the world.

Rinse out containers, jars and bottles before putting them in your recycling bin. They don't have to be spotless, just give them a quick clean.

Remove the lids from bottles and jars before putting items your recycling bin.

Pizza boxes, paper bags or cardboard boxes containing food also need special treatment before putting them into your recycling bin. Take out all food items before recycling and remember if the cardboard/paper box or paper bag is too soiled or greasy it cannot be recycled.

47% of Australia's household waste is made up of organic waste like food scraps and garden cuttings. That's a huge amount of waste to add to landfill so if you have a bin for garden cuttings or your council runs an organic waste collection service make sure you utilise it. Better still, invest in a compost bin, bokashi bin or worm farm to make good use of your organic waste and keep it out of landfill.

Just load the Accepted Version of your manuscript to ResearchOnline@JCU. This option costs nothing. The Accepted Version has the same content of the published paper BUT does not have publisher formatting and logo’s etc.

Loading the Accepted Version is now widely practiced. It is referred to as Green Open Access or The Green Road. For example, Green Open Access meets the new NHMRC policy (http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants/policy/dissemination-research-findings) where publications resulting from NHMRC funded research need to be publicly available within 12 months of publication.

To see a working example – check out this record in ResearchOnline@JCU: http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/4771. You will notice that there is both a Published and an Accepted Version of the article. The Accepted Version provides immediate, unrestricted access without barriers. This can make the difference between being cited or not cited. The published version is restricted – providing delayed access through the “Request a Copy” button.

The Eddie Koiki Mabo Library on the Townsville campus will be open until 10.30pm on Friday 9 and 16 November. You can check the complete Cairns and Townsville Library exam opening hours web pages to help you organise your time.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

iBooks and ePeriodicals on the iPad: The mini missing manual. This book takes you down the virtual rows of Apple's iBookstore, to help you find, buy, and download books and subscribe to magazine and newspapers on your iPad. You'll learn now to navigate your books and periodicals and sync them back to iTunes to swap them on and off your iPad to free up storage space.
In addition, you'll find out where to get free books in the iBookstore, and where you can shop for iPad-compatible books, both free and for-pay, outside of Apple's domain.
Finally, you'll learn the fine art of eBook
navigation, including how to change a book's font and font size, add bookmarks, highlight special passages, dynamically look up words in the dictionary, and search through your iBooks.

iPad secrets (covers iPad, iPad 2, and 3rd generation iPad). Most iPad users are familiar with the product’s basic functions, but the iPad offers an endless array options, and one doesn’t need to be a pro to understand. iPad Secrets provides the millions of iPad owners with a true behind the scenes look into a vault of features and little known short cuts of this sea changing tablet.
Direct from a product reviewer at Engadget, the world's most read tech blog, iPad Secrets provides practical information to vastly improve one’s tablet experience,
and to make the device more useful as a tool.

iPhone and iPad app 24-hour trainer. The number of applications in the Apple app store is growing at a staggering rate. Want to get in the game, but don't know iOS? This book will help! With even little or no prior programming experience, you can learn the code necessary to build an app by following the how-to instructions. Comprised of clear, no-nonsense lessons, the book walks you through each tutorial and then encourages you to work
through simple exercises so that you can immediately apply what you just learned.
These lessons are backed by video demonstrations on the accompanying DVD to further illustrate the instruction and drive home the main points. In addition, the book's appendices contain helpful information such as obtaining a device UDID, testing, and distributing an app and also lists common reasons why applications are rejected, so you can prepare to take precautionary measures to avoid these instances.

Make music with your iPad. Music recording and performance apps are some of the top grossing applications for iPad. Major label artists are making use of Apple's iOS products and apps to make music and have even recorded complete albums on the iPad. Written by an experienced Apple and digital music journalist, this unique resource opens your eyes (and ears) to the amazing possibilities that the iPad offers as a musical creation device for both novices and professionals. You'll sing a new tune when you
learn the power and simplicity of using the iPad as a tool for creating professional-quality music.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

JCU Library is trialling the American Psychology Association's (APA) PsycTESTS database until 27 November. PsycTESTS is a research database that provides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about the test and its development and administration. Go to the APA PsycTESTS webpagefor more information about this database.

Accessing PsycTESTS, PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES:

No logins are required while using these databases on campus, however off campus users will be asked to authenticate with their jc username and password.

Please note that PsycTESTS is running on the APA platform which also give access to PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES. Please deselect PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES to only search the PsycTESTS database.

JCU Library has an ongoing subscription to the ProQuest platform which also provides access to PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES.

JCU Library can not guarantee access to PsycTESTS after the trial period. However heavy use between now and 27 November will support the case for including the database in the JCU Library online collection. We encourage you to take advantage of PsycTESTS, and to tell your friends!